Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová (Czech Republic)

She was born in 1976 in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She graduated from the Department of Humanity Studies at Prague’s Charles University and the Department of Documentary Film at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU).
In her graduation film Never Been Better, she set up for a trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina after ten years of exile. The travel journal, narrated in a direct manner, is composed of mini-profiles of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s various characters. It has the ambition to present a map of a country divided both socially and politically. In a rapid succession, recordings of the witness accounts of the members of various nationalities comment on the journey through a damaged territory, forming a chain of questions and answers. In its timeless perspective, the film explores the question of identity and emigration, one‘s interconnection with the place of one‘s birth as well as the ability to find a new space for living both for the body and the heart.
In her latest film Ladies in White, the director and her crew took a trip to Cuba to meet women from the organization Damas del Blanco (Ladies in White) whose husbands, fathers and brothers were imprisoned for anti-state activities by Castro’s regime in the spring of 2003. Miloševičová employs the cinéma-vérité method; what is important is the face and personality of the protagonist, contextualization is left upon the spectator. Co-produced by Czech humanitarian organization People in Need, the film shootings were held in secret and under very difficult conditions in most cases. Although the crew were arrested and deported from the country in the end, they still managed to capture numerous authentic interviews with the major representatives of the organization.
For several years, Ivana Miloševičová has also been working in the Institute of Documentary Film, a non-profit organization supporting creative documentary in Central and Eastern Europe. Within this organization, she is responsible for the programming and professional management of its projects.